Twitter is partnering with eToro to allow users to buy and sell a wider range of financial instruments, marking a rare deal for Twitter under Elon Musk’s leadership, who aims to turn Twitter into a “super app” offering financial services.
Twitter has teamed up with eToro to allow its users to buy and sell crypto and other assets starting Thursday. This partnership marks a rare business deal for Twitter since Elon Musk took over as CEO after buying the platform for $44 billion last year. Musk has expressed his intention to turn Twitter into a “super app” that offers financial services on top of social media. He told a Morgan Stanley conference last month that he wants Twitter to become “the biggest financial institution in the world.”
Currently, Twitter’s “cashtags” feature allows users to view real-time trading data from TradingView on index funds like the S&P 500 and shares of some companies like Tesla. By searching for a ticker symbol and inserting a dollar sign in front of it, users can see the price information from TradingView using an API. With the eToro partnership, Twitter cashtags will be expanded to cover more instruments and asset classes, according to an eToro spokesperson.
Users will also be able to click a button that says “view on eToro” to access eToro’s site and buy and sell assets on its platform. EToro uses TradingView as its market data partner. “As we’ve grown over the past three years immensely, we’ve seen more and more of our users interact on Twitter [and] educate themselves about the markets,” said Yoni Assia, eToro’s CEO, in an interview with CNBC. “There is very high quality content, real-time content on financial analysis of companies and what’s happening around the world. We believe this partnership will enable us to reach those new audiences [and] connect better the brands of Twitter and eToro.”
Founded in Israel in 2007, eToro is an online brokerage that allows users to buy and sell stocks, cryptocurrencies, and index funds. Its most popular feature is a function that lets people mimic the trading strategies of other users. The company has over 32 million registered users across Europe, Asia, and the United States, according to Assia.
Under Musk’s leadership, Twitter has reduced its staffing significantly, bringing its headcount down from 8,000 to 1,500 when he took over in a bid to cut costs and achieve profitability. However, this has caused concern among advertisers, with many brands leaving the platform due to worries that its content moderation standards would slip.
Despite this, Assia said he worked with the same team at Twitter on the stock market data tool that he had worked with on previous partnerships with the company. He did not have any contact with Musk directly, but he joked that meeting Musk was inevitable after having met Warren Buffett and Bernard Arnault, two of the world’s richest men.
Assia said that “Fintwit,” or financial Twitter, has become a popular trend on the app, with many people using it to find breaking news and updates on stocks and other assets. Twitter was a key platform involved in the boom in retail trading in 2021.
Musk aims to turn Twitter into a “super app” that offers users a range of services, such as instant messaging, banking, and travel. Such apps have been popular in East Asia, where internet giant Tencent offers payments through its WeChat messaging app. Earlier this week, Musk changed the corporate name of Twitter to X Corp after merging with a shell company with that name, according to a court filing, highlighting his ambition to turn the firm into a super app.